


Just Genjutsu (Roughs)

by Bhelryss



Series: (Never) Just Genjutsu [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Like, gai or lee cameo in the 3rd, heavy spoilers, sakusai in second chapter, spoilers for just genjutsu, the violence tag is for the...second one i think, these are the roughs i wrote out at work like in 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6804847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pieces of JG I've written that I haven't gotten around to working into the plot. Like, scenes that were just bunnies that needed writing. Or scenes that were discarded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You have to talk to us about what you see sometime, Sakura.” Sasuke claims, arms crossed across his chest. It’s just the three of them again, Kakashi-sensei had disappeared again after Sakura had failed to throw off another simple genjutsu. Something about hanging a chuunin by their toes because, “slotted her for genjutsu my ass,” but to be honest, he’d barely caught the words. 

“It’s not pretty, Sasuke. What I see.” Sakura explained flatly, expressions smoothing out, betraying nothing. Even her chakra smoothed out, the little spikes of emotions tempering into vague ripples. Naruto frowned, concentrated a little harder on his teammate’s signature. 

“How’d you do that, Sakura-chan?” He exclaimed. “Make your chakra hide your emotions like that.?” Her eyes cut to Sasuke, and there was reluctance in the way her lips quirked down at the corners. 

“I saw it,” she said after a long pause. “What else,” Sasuke prompted, “did you see.” An unspoken order to tell him hung in the air between them, poisoning the already tense atmosphere. They locked eyes, and Naruto swore Sakura’s chakra shuddered and ballooned out in fear and determination, but with how fast she tamped it back into a rippling pool, he couldn’t be sure. However, the grim smile he and Sasuke both saw gave him a bad feeling. 

“Well, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura crooned, voice so sweet and yet cutting, “I saw death! Your death, my death, Naruto’s, Kakashi-sensei’s...You name them, I saw them. But mostly mine, you understand?” She cocked her head to one side, and her smile grew pained. It was the sort of smile you saw on the not-safe-for-genin jounin. The sort of people who were one trigger away from snapping in a bad way, the kind you didn’t want to scare new genin with, let alone Academy prospectives. The sort Naruto glimpsed sometimes through not-quite-curtained windows on the psychiatric floor during his yearly game of avoid-the-doctor, when he was supposed to be getting his physical and check-up.

“I don’t get out of them until I’m dead, you see?” Sakura continued. And then she laughed, loud and harsh. “Apparently, there’s quite a bit of seer blood on my mother’s side of the family.” She said bitterly, turning her head away, finally breaking her staring contest with Sasuke. “I’ll understand if you guys want me off the team. It’s a crippling weakness.” 

Sasuke surprised Naruto and Sakura both with his completely serious words. “No.” he declared, “We work well enough together, all of us. I’m not breaking in a new teammate, who knows if they’ll work well with me, let alone the deadlast!” Sasuke finished, without too much teasing towards Naruto, before bulldozing right over the blond’s offended yelp, “You’re a dependable teammate, Sakura. We’ll figure something out.” Finished, Sasuke uncrossed his arms and stalked off back towards Konoha proper, leaving Sakura and Naruto in his wake.


	2. Chapter 2

“You were slated as a genjutsu type, Sakura-chan.” Kakashi-sensei said, so disappointed. Or at she thought he was disappointed, a jounin was very good at suppressing body language. She was panting, still shivering after emerging from her sensei’s minor genjutsu. She was supposed to have seen a meadow at sunset and a young Ino, a predetermined memory to test her abnormally horrific reaction to genjutsu. 

What she’d seen, what she’d felt instead had been Sasuke shoving a lightning cloaked hand into her chest, literally ripping out her heart with a feral grin to the cry of “Chidori!” She’d bled out slowly enough that she’d felt the oppressive, malevolent chakra force that she knew was Naruto. Her lungs drew air but her mind was swimming from the lack of oxygen. He’d cauterized the wound, Sakura realized. She wasn’t going to die of blood loss, but instead suffocation. 

A dark visage flooded her range of vision, impassive and blood covered. He blinked, and the muscles around his eyes contracted just enough as to hint at concern. “Hag, you are not healing.” And she laughed, a brittle, breathy sound. 

“No miracles this time, Sai-chan.” She said with aching gasps. “That blood yours?” And Sai nodded, using a hand to brush midnight hair away from a nasty looking gash. It showed bone, and she knew it might prove fatal during the fight. The fight she was dying from, really. Using what felt like the last of her physical energy and lucidity, she reached up with fingers flickering green. 

Touched his face gently, like a lover, and healed. When she retracted her chakra her vision was fading out. She focused her hardest on Sai, on the feral sounds Naruto was making, and felt her eye prick with tears. “Don’t die, Sai.” She whispered, and pulled him into a kiss, transferring the rest of her chakra and life force to him in that instant. 

That had been when she’d returned to the old training ground, death of body fresh in her mind. She’d looked at her sensei and had just known, seen an echo of that somber boy in the way Kakashi held his shoulders. The feeling of deja vu and longing left over from the genjutsu roiled in her stomach, leading her to retch all over her sensei’s shoes. When she looked up, Naruto had slipped next to her, frowning with worry. And Sasuke, not too far away, scowled. 

And she retched again, because Inner wouldn’t let them scream.


	3. Chapter 3

She’d never been more frustrated, even with Kakashi-sensei’s extra genjutsu training, her adverse reactions weren’t lessening. Naruto’s ability to throw off the genjutsu were improving, albeit slowly, while she still only came to after living through each new nightmare visage. They’d tested almost every kind of genjutsu suitable for a genin, with each giving up the same results. The few jounin Kakashi-sensei had taken her to see, despite having a genjutsu or medical ninjutsu specialty, couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. 

When they accompanied her into the genjutsu, they never shared the same experience as her. They always saw what was intended. Her mother had taken her to see a priestess at a temple three days away, who seemed interested but offered no solution. Instead the woman had baldly asked, “Is there any oracle blood in your fmaily, Haruno-san? It seems you may be seeing the future.” 

Inner had been surprisingly silent, Sakura had expected a guffaw or something at the absurd explanation. 

Inner had said, later, that while Sakura couldn’t feel it, “the genjutsu, the illusions, or whatever they are...They’ve all got, an echo of me. I can feel that echo of us die in each of the genjutsu. It...it could be the future. A lot of what we get from the illusion’s memories are the same. That wave mission, the chuunin exams? Sasuke leaving? All near-constants. If you’ve eliminated the impossible…” Inner trailed off. 

“Whatever remains,” Sakura finished,” no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Sakura and her alter ego exchanged a concerned silence.

“So,” Inner prompted, falling silent, waiting on Sakura to collect her thoughts. “So,” Inner said again, “what do we do if what we see is the future? How do we not die?” Sakura is silent for a long time, turning over the illusion-memories, considering. 

“We get faster,” she said, discarding a memory of being just not-fast-enough and getting Kusanagi through the aortic artery. “We get stronger.” Sakura added, after she’d sorted multiple sets of memories about weak genin years into a pile. With a thought the deaths associated with being slow joined them. “We just need...maybe Kakashi-sensei? But,” and Sakura plucked an image of a green-clad ninja out of the shifting pile, “Maybe?” And together Inner and Sakura watched a flood of genin illusion-memories, just to get a better idea of what they might face. 

Realizing they only had a couple months until the mission to Wave, Sakura blanched. “We need to start tomorrow. Early tomorrow.” Inner nodded grimly, they couldn’t fail.


	4. Chapter 4

Kabuto led them towards the tower, explaining his plan as they went. They catch sight of the tower through a break in the trees, and by then they’re all agreed to Kabuto’s plan. They start moving and twenty minutes out, Sakura slumps to the forest floor. Naruto notices first, and curses loudly when he recognizes the frozen look on her face. 

“Hey, Bastard,” he calls. Kabuto slows to a halt as Sasuke doubles back. “Genjutsu,” Naruto mutters, shutting Sakura’s eyes. Sasuke hisses, he’s near out of chakra. If he breaks the genjutsu she’s under (assuming it’s not area-wide), he won’t have the chakra to defend them. 

“She’s such shit at genjutsu.” He mutters angrily. It’s irrational, but with Naruto’s control issues, and her own inability, he’s the only one with any defense against this particular ninja art. Naruto looks at him expectantly, brushing off the complaint as the words of a tired, panicked boy. “Can’t afford to,” Sasuke announces, having come to a conclusion. “It’s probably area wide, can’t afford to use the chakra. You carry her, I’m the better fighter right now.” And with that statement, Sasuke pinned the blond with a pointed look to the arm he knows was shattered. (Insanely fast acting healing kekkei genkei or not, that arm would be fragile for a couple hours longer.) Naruto nodded, hefting Sakura onto his back. 

“Everything all right?” Kabuto called. 

He looked concerned, but It- that man had taught him all he’d ever needed to know about misplaced trust. So before moronic, naive Naruto could blow Sakura’s greatest weakness (and their own, said a quiet part of his mind that liked teamwork and his innocent teammates) to a potential enemy, he said, “Chakra depletion. We’ve had a hard few days.” And Kabuto smiled, the expression for some reason raising the hair on the back of his neck. 

“That’s good,” the med-nin said, “It would be awful if it were something else.” and they lapsed back into silence as they resumed walking. Almost an hour and a half later, Sasuke was sure. 

“We’ve passed this tree before,” he said, “Someone’s caught us in a genjutsu.” In response, all three boys adopted the same grim expression. Sakura came too after they’d defeated the genjutsu users. As usual after a genjutsu-induced coma, she seemed skittish around him and clung a little closer to Naruto. Her chakra was low, enough so that his lie to Kabuto was believable. 

“Did we get the scroll we needed?” she asked, voice subdued. When Naruto flashed her a triumphant grin and waved the appropriated scroll with a sedate smugness, a little of the tension in her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled wanly. “Oh good…” Kabuto looked concerned, eyeing his teammate’s admittedly pale face. “We close to the tower?” Sasuke nodded, and Sakura looked almost weak with relief. 

Almost embarrassed at her unguarded emotions, Sasuke turned away. “Let’s pick up the pace.” He began moving, heard Sakura decline to be carried by Naruto, and let Kabuto take the lead again. This way he could keep his eyes on the medic’s back. The second they walked through the tower’s gates Kabuto and his team split off from their own. Finding an empty room, Team Seven holed themselves up in a defensible corner. 

“Before we open these,” Sasuke said, eyes flickering to Sakura’s pale face before motioning to the Heaven and Earth scrolls, “tell us what you saw, Sakura.” She picked at her sleeves, reminding him again how far she’d come from their Academy days. For one, she’d ditched the dress early on, sticking with the standard uniform shirt similar to their sensei’s. 

“It’s good we managed to keep away from that guy with the neck...thing. He killed Naruto, and bit you! The bite had something wrong with it, and...you were dying. And then these Sound guys showed up...but so did -” She stopped when Naruto put a hand on her shoulder, the contact dragging her back from the brink of hysteria. She pulled in a shuddering breath to steady herself before she began to speak again at a slower pace. 

“The Sound genin wanted to fight you, Sasuke. But you were still out of it, and I’d - it had taken all night to get you stable.” She flashed a glance at Naruto, the look tinged with grief (he imagined that was from the genjutsu’s aftermath.) Sakura always had some issues keeping reality and the genjutsu separate during those first few hours after snapping out of it. “So I fought them,” she said simply. “Killed the girl, totally by accident, but I guess that’s not important. It just made the other two mad, and they’re strong enough that I couldn’t...I’m sorry, I just…” The sudden sniffling alarmed him. 

“Sakura it’s okay. We,” and Naruto paused to make sure Sasuke’s body language didn’t make him a liar, “don’t think you’re weak. You’ve gotten so much better!” Sasuke nodded, he’d never say it, but Sakura’s improvement had surprised him. He, if anyone had bothered to ask him, would have bet that Sakura would quit. But she’d proved him wrong. So, tears held at bay by her teammates’ reaffirmation of her improvement, she carried on. 

“You woke up. You tor...he...Sasuke you killed the one with the wind tunnels in his arms. There was so much blood. And then, the Sand team showed up. It was a slaughter. Under no circumstances will we engage the redhead. He’ll kill everyone! He controls sand and -” She shuddered under the memory and fell silent.

“Okay.” Naruto said kindly, “We’ll try not to fight him. Sasuke, the scrolls?” And then Iruka was there to usher them into the big auditorium. And Sasuke was surprised how many teams had made it, and therefore unsurprised when the Hokage called for preliminaries. With merely an assessing glance at the others left in the room, Sasuke began to prepare for his upcoming match. He hoped his opponent wouldn’t be from his team, but he didn’t pray. He hadn’t prayed since that night.


End file.
